by jphilo | Oct 7, 2010 | Family
If asked to name those who embodies the values of my husband’s side of the family, two names would come to mind: Uncle Harold and Aunt Harriet Walker. Because of their example and forethought, their descendants gather at Shadow Valley each summer for Family Camp.
We’ve always known Harold and Harriet were remarkable people, but a recent email from Aunt Harriet (well into her eighties she’s learned to use email, scanners, calendar makers, and digital photographs) informed us that the rest of the world is catching on, too. A local reporter interviewed Harold and published his story in the Oconee Leader. The article spans his life as a young boy in Kansas and Idaho, his stint as a bomber pilot in WWII, his long career as an educator and the books he’s self-published. You can read the article at Oconee Man Chronicles Memories.
On a side note, Aunt Harriet is an accomplished writer and historian in her own right. Her book, Your Alaskan Daughter, was named as an all-time favorite by several women in our book club, and we’ve been meeting monthly for almost a decade.
If you’re looking for primary source material for historical research about homesteading in Alaska or the end of WWII in the Pacific theater, their books and memories would provide invaluable resources. Or, if you’re looking for people who embody unconditional love, faithfulness, joy in all circumstances, or good stewardship, leave a comment. I’d be happy to introduce you to them. Knowing them has made a difference in my life. They could make a difference in your life, too.
by jphilo | Sep 27, 2010 | Family
Have you checked out the fall shoe styles lately? If your 1950s and 60s grandma shopped where my grandma shopped, then your as stymied by the style pictured above as I am. Me and my cousins had only one name for them.
Grandma shoes.
Nobody under the age of sixty wore shoes like that. We wouldn’t have been caught dead in them, not if we wanted to show our faces without being laughed out of school. Not even my mother, who was a school teacher and thus queen of sensible shoes, wore them because she didn’t want to be laughed out of the teachers’ lounge.
Grandma shoes.
The shoes my grandma wore. In those days she was a big woman. A beefy woman. Stout and matronly, her feet always clad in sensible, totally non-sexy shoes. They were the perfect match for her dowdy print house dresses and her grey hair permed into tight little curls. She was a grandma, not a cool dresser.
And these are not cool shoes.
They are the kind of shoes girls wear when they dress up as little old ladies for Halloween. Or when they’re cast as the grandma in the high school play. I ought to know. I wore a pair – in fact borrowed them from my grandma – when cast as a hard-of-hearing, scotch-tippling nursing home resident in our high school production of The Silver Whistle. The shoes were the finishing touch of a stellar costume, which included a pillow padded bosom and corresponding derrière. The footwear garnered more snickers than the bosom, even amongst high school boys.
Now that’s saying something.
I learned something else during my run as a drunk old lady. Grandma shoes aren’t comfortable. At all. Sure, they stay on your feet and the arch support is top notch, but they have no cushion, no give, no bounce. They suck the spring right out of your step and make you walk funny. Like an old grandma, to be exact.
Think about it.
Who wants to walk old lady sooner than necessary? Maybe women under the age of 50 will give it a whirl since they still think they’re immortal. But for those of us over 50, old ladydom is approaching at lightning speed, and we don’t want to dress the part any sooner than necessary. So I’m not jumping on this fall’s fashion bandwagon, no matter how popular the shoes become. I’m sticking to my footwear guns and hoping something better comes along next year. Ask as often as you like, but my answer will be the same.
No Grandma Shoes for me.
by jphilo | Sep 23, 2010 | Family
I am such a sap. If my parents had been given any inkling of the weepy woman they were raising, they would have taken out Kleenex stock and made a bundle of money. Who knows why, but I cry at senior dance recitals, weddings, funerals, graduations, parent/teacher conferences, and reunions – not just those involving my family but those of friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. I also get teary-eyed at the sight of wheelchairs, healthy babies, sick babies, hospitals, nursing homes, old couples holding hands, parents holding their kids’ hands, the American flag, soldiers, and I’d better stop there or the list will never end.
So I should have said no last fall when the producer of Words to Live By, an international radio program produced by RBC Ministries, invited me to share our family’s story for a future broadcast. (Don’t let the invitation impress you. RBC is the parent company that also owns, Discovery House Publishers (DHP). And DHP released A Different Dream for My Child last year and will also publish Different Dream Parenting.)
Instead I said yes. Of course, I cried through much of the interview. So hard, in fact, that they had to turn off the tape and give me time to blow my nose. More than once.
Well, last week word came that the segment featuring our family’s story will air this coming weekend, September 25 and 26. At first I didn’t tell anybody, because who would want to listen to a weepy woman blubber into a microphone? But yesterday, the nice people at RBC sent a CD of the program. I listened to this morning and was pleasantly surprised. Somehow, the miracle workers at Words to Live By edited out my snuff-snuffs and nose drips so the broadcast is not a blatant marketing ploy for tissue barons.
If you want to listen to the show, go to www.words.net and use the station finder to locate your closest station and air time. You can also listen to the broadcast at www.words.net from September 24 – 30. And from the looks of things, a free downloadable podcast will be available at the iTunes store a week or two after the show first airs.
So have a listen and see what you think. To be on the safe side, have some Kleenex handy. Just don’t pull them out of the box before you need them. No sense making the tissue kings any richer than necessary.
by jphilo | Sep 22, 2010 | Family
September has been a banner month for my husband. In addition to the annual September happenings that make him happy – cooler temperatures and squash season – several new ones have him smiling, too.
First, on the happy list are the blossoms on the trumpet vines he planted two summers ago. After two years of tender and slightly obsessive care, not to mention hours of head rubbing (the gardner’s nervous habit) and yards of chicken wire to ward off hungry dear in the winter, the vines on our pergola are blooming.
Second on the list is the new-fangled watch, formerly on the hubby’s want list and now on his wrist. It’s a special runner’s watch – think of a Get Smart gadget on steroids. Not that the husband is on steroids. No, no, no, not my Pa Ingalls who refuses all drugs, including aspirin, and help from neighbors, even though that nice Mr. Edwards down the way would love to help build our cabin and share his nails.
But I digress. Back to the watch which does everything a runner’s heart desires. It keeps track of time and distance and who knows what else? It even comes with a website, which Hiram showed to his co-workers who are also runners (not while they had patients, mind you), and now they all want a watch like his.
However, the trumpet vine blossoms and the bells-and-whistles watch pale in comparison to the third item on Hiram’s happy list: Sudoku puzzles. Believe it or not, the man did not know about them until July 30, 2010. I was aware of the cursed things, and though I never actively hid their existence from him, I never drew attention to them either. Why? Because I knew their nasty den of rows, columns, and numbers (Can there be a more repugnant combination? Only if one ate asparagus while solving them.) would lure him into their nasty den the minute he saw them.
I was right. Ever since he learned about them at a family reunion – that’s the last time he’s going to on my side of the family – he’s been hooked. He works on them for hours, carries the little book wherever he goes, and dates the ones he solves. If I need to find him, I just follow the trail of eraser crumbs. And at the end of the trail, what do I see?
A man, fit and trim at 54, with all the hair rubbed off the top of his head. He’s smiling, always smiling, clutching a book full of rows, columns and numbers close to his chest. He is one happy, happy man.
What’s not to love about a guy like that?
by jphilo | Sep 8, 2010 | Family
Last night at supper, Hiram and I talked about the kids. Maybe the box of tomatoes and the five pumpkins on the counter led to the topic of last night’s supper conversation. After all, the vegetables were gifts from our kids: the tomatoes from Allen and the pumpkins from Anne. Or maybe we talked about them because, as every parent knows, once you have kids they are the focal point of most conversations, even after they are married and independent.
“Did Allen’s childhood give you any clue,” I ventured, “that he would become Pharmer Boy?”
Hiram thought for awhile. “Well, he liked his dog.” Then he thought some more. “No,” he said. “No.”
I stared at the vegetables on the counter. They stared back, patiently waiting to be processed and frozen. “And Anne,” I went on. “She always talked about gardening in the spring, but never carried through. And now look, she’s become Pharmer Girl. And they have pharmer spouses who want to grow their own organic food and live in the country.”
“They’re like a throw back to our parents’ generation,” Hiram said. “Can you imagine the conversations they could have if their grandpas were alive.”
I tried to imagine it. My dad shooting the breeze with Allen about which cattle were best for meat and dairy. My daughter picking apples in the orchard with Hiram’s dad, learning how to press cider and dry apples.
For a moment, I grieved the pleasure denied four people I love dearly. Then I went to the counter, picked up a paring knife and began peeling the tomatoes. The flesh was firm in my hands, succulent and rich as the memory of the two kind men who passed down their love of field and critter to our children.
Thank you, Dad.
Thank you, Dave.
You would be so proud of Pharmer Allen and Pharmer Anne.
by jphilo | Sep 7, 2010 | Family
We spent the weekend at our annual Labor Day reunion. Each September we gather, the two branches of our extended family with roots in the northwest Iowa town. For 36 – 48 hours we visit, eat, play, reminisce and create new memories as we have done for almost 25 years.
But this year’s reunion felt different. All weekend, I felt like a character in a fantasy story. You know, the oddball wearing animal skins who materializes at the edge of the forest. She sniffs the air and licks a finger to test the wind. After a brief pronouncement, “The wind is shifting. Big change coming,” her eyes twinkle wisely, and she disappears into the forest.
The cabin we stayed in over Labor Day didn’t have a forest nearby, just a cornfield on one side and a lake on the other. It was sweatshirt weather, too chilly for off-the-shoulder animal skins and prophetic announcements. But all weekend, I was sniffing the air and watching the wind change us.
Some of the children, who were babies and toddlers at the first reunion, are now married. Some are parents of their own babies and toddlers. The babies who joined our midst in the late 80s and early 90s, who made the S.O Weird Cousins videos each year, are college students. They don’t make videos any more. They sit around and catch up on one another’s lives and talk about getting what they call “real jobs” in the next few years.
My siblings and cousins and our spouses are the age our parents were when the reunions first began…though we feel much younger than they did, I’m sure. Our parents are older, grayer, content to observe the goings on instead of leading our energetic troops.
While we sat and ate and played and did all the things we do each Labor Day, our roles shifted slightly. The balance of power tipping ever-so-slightly to the younger generation. The old order of things is drawing to a close, and a new dawn is taking shape.
The wind is shifting. Big change coming.
